LyrArc Article Gist
Changes Republican Governor Sam Brownback is making in the state of Kansas, which focus on conservative values, lower taxes, and major cuts to spending to reduce the footprint of government in the state. Kansas has a large Republican majority in the House of Representatives and strong tea party fervor, giving Brownback an opportunity to remake government in the state. Yet there is some skepticism about how lasting these changes can be with the cuts in government services. Some Republicans say the question is how much in government services do the people of Kansas want- if the cuts are too steep the people of Kansas may find too many services have been cut. Over the the last century Kansas has usually voted for moderate Republican governors, making this a major change.

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany's chancellor Merkel sees Britain as necessary for Europe and the European spirit. This even though she has differences with British prime minister Cameron on how to elect the new president of the EU following EU parliamentary elections in May 2014. She told the German parliament in June 2014- "Britain is really no cozy partner. Yet Germany and Britain share values and interests. I consider it grossly negligent, in fact unacceptable, how easily some people say that it is really all the same whether Britain goes along or not, or more: whether Britain remains a member of the European Union or not."

LyrArc Article Gist
Gottfried says the large premium offered by Zillow to acquire Trulia is an issue, as the $3.5 billion in stock offered is about twice the market value of Trulia in July 2014. The deal does not address the limitation of both sites in that all the listings come from the real estate brokerage firms and is purely defensive.

LyrArc Article Gist
Views of East Germans in the city of Erfurt on the eve of the 20th anniversary of Germany's reunification. Disparities remain after over a trillion dollars were invested to improve conditions in East Germany, yet the positive changes are visible. In this city of Erfurt the burning of lowgrade coal for heating homes made the air less breathable. It could take years just to buy a car. Still Germans in the east are disappointed, as their expectations were high during reunification. Wages in the east are 80% of wages in the west and unemployment is 12%, and the average wealth of east Germans is 40% lower than west Germans. Young people have immigrated to the west, leaving older people and retirees. Because of this the term reunification is less used than the term "die Wende"- meaning the turn or the change. A sense of the loss of the old values forged in a socialist state is still felt deeply by some east Germans and the change has been largely positive but wrenching in terms of a loss of identity, a sense of being treated as immigrants in their own country....

LyrArc Article Gist
New legislation that cleared Congress on helping homeowners about 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure. Congresspromises to get tough on lenders and loan servicers if they do work to honor what Congress has mandated. The Federal Housing Administration will run the program and it will insure upto $300 billion in refinanced 30 year fixed rate loans The mortgages cannot be for more than 90% of a home's newly appraised value. For mortgages that exceed that value the lender would have to voluntarily write down the principal to the qualifying level. If the home goes up in value the borrower must share newly created equity with the FHA. THe program begins October 1 and ends Sept 30, 2011. Borrowers will not qualify if they have intentionally defaulted on the loan or if they had a debt to income ratio of less than 31% as of March 1. This is the first serious effort by Congress and the Administration to work in bipartisan fashion to put a serious dent in the housing foreclosure levels which are at the root of the present financial crisis and Secreatary Paulson, Bernanke, and Barney Frank and others in Congress have helped support this effort which should eventually help the financail markets recover from failing mortgages that caused this crisis....

LyrArc Article Gist
Rates are increasing in the $4 trillion repurchase agreement market. The repurchase agreement market or repos market is the main source of short term funding for firms in the financial markets. Borrowers put up Treasury securities as collateral. The difference beween the value of the collateral and the cash loan amount is known as the "haircut." The current collateral requirement is $102 of Treasurys for $100 in cash loan. If the U.S. is downgraded to AA the collateral could go up to $103 or higher. This would lead to firms coming up with more Treasury securities for loans. The rate for overnight transactions also goes up. The rate was up form 0.01 % to 0.1% in the last week. The result could be dislocation in financial markets as firms have to come up with more collateral and pay higher repo rates, and some firms prefer to hold cash.

LyrArc Article Gist
Feldstein says that the $700 billion plan to buy impaired assets will not prevent an overshooting downward in house prices, as more people have negative equity in their homes, rising to 40% of all mortgages at some point; and leading to a cycle of foreclosure and further price declines. This will only decrease the value of the mortgage securities that Treasury seeks to take off the hands of banks. And without direct government help in form of lowcost loans, say 2%, the cost of capital for the government, for 20% of the loan upto $80,000; more and more homeowners will have negative equity in their homes. This will lead to more foreclosures as housing loans are not full recourse, so that only the house is lost and the homeowner can move to an apartment and carry on from there. Thw size of this program would be $1 trillion but it gives the government income from the loans made and these would be full recourse loans so the taxpayer is protected. In Feldstein's view the current plan does not address declining house prices which is the root of the problem. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The effort by a community bank, Talmer Bank, to fill in for the lack of mortgage lending for certain neighborhoods in Detroit with abandoned or ransacked homes. Talmer Bank provides $25,000 loans so that these homes can be repaired and restored. Another agency helping in this work of renewal of these neighborhoods is the Detroit Land Bank Authority which auctions abandoned homes with bids starting at $1000. That agency was started in 2007 and is now making fresh efforts under Mayor Mike Duggan. This agency had in 2015 about 22,351 residential structures and 54,660 vacant lots in its inventory, one fifth of the land in the city. Between 1900-1950 Detroit's population grew to 1.85 million. Then by 2010 as the auto industry hit a downturn and residents departed from a declining city the population declined to 700,000. Other approaches taken by DLBA are to fix up abandoned homes and sell these properties sometimes at a loss, and to demolish homes that cannot be restored to raise property values in the neighborhood. Even here with scarce resources the DLBA has to pick and choose which neighborhoods have the best chance of recovery to invest resources....

LyrArc Article Gist
Davidoff describes the hype in Silicon Valley that leads to soaring valuations- hype about Nest includes founder Fadell's reference to his vision for home thermostats that would change the world. All the participants benefit says Davidoff, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, venture capital firms and firms acquired such as Nest. Nest was acquired by Google for $3.1 billion, when it would have been valued at about $2 billion before Google showed interest. The hype lets Google present itself as the company of the future, and boost its image, which means a lot in getting investors to support the huge valuations.

LyrArc Article Gist
We show here several articles from The Guardian on the topic of family time. Keir Starmer said he would keep Friday nights after 6 pm for family time. His wife Vic Starmer 50 years, works in occiupational health at the NHS and wants to continue her life as usual unaffected by Labour's and her husband's win. The couple wanted to stay at their north London home and not move to 10 Downing Street as the two value their privacy highly. One of the children is taking the GCSE's and the wish is for the family to keep going on as normal. Starmer says he also get a direct insight into the NHS from Vic Starmer's interaction with the NHS staff.

LyrArc Article Gist
The difficult task ahead for Fiat's Marchionne, trying to reverse Chrysler's decline. Running Opel and Fiat, will take a lot of energy and initiative, and its by no means clear how he is going to go about doing this. Some arithmetic done by analysts shows the value of the Fiat, Opel, Chrysler auto companies, by excluding other non-auto parts of Fiat, and taking out Fiat debt and liabilities estimated at $8 billion euros. And taking that number and Fiat's market cap, the difference gives a value of 5.5 billion euros as what investors ascribe to Fiat Auto and its ambitions. This is just one fourth of the Fiat auto units 2009 revenues of 21.7 billion euros, as estimated by Morgan Stanley.

LyrArc Article Gist
It should be remembered as NHK points out that Mr. Obama never visited the Main Building of the Hiroshima Museum and only spent a little time in the East Building. It is the Main Building that Prime Minister Kishida- who represents Hiroshima City in parliament - wants Biden, Scholz and other G7 leaders to see. It is only in the Main Building that leaders can see the graphic images of the devastation of the atomic bomb dropped by the plane Enola Gay on Hiroshima.  A suggestion is for NHK to give a private broadcast to G7 leaders of the documentary already shown in Asia on NHK television last week.  Having seen it one can say that it in no way affects the use of nuclear deterrance. A suggestion for the Hiroshima Museum authority is for it to also show the devastation of Japanese bombing in Asia from World War II that  may have created the insular feeling in American public about the dropping of the bomb and only thinking it could have come sooner to save lives for the Allies, itself creating conflicting feelings and affecting mental health. A recent exhibition in Barcelona showed the Nazi bombing of Republican parts of Spain leading to millions of refugees crossing over to Europe. Similar situation happened in China and the images may have created America's insular feeling about the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It is in everyone's interest to know, to comprehend the devastation in all places, the conflicting narratives that were told, and for people as spiritual values teach us to develop the virtuous conduct, the concentration and the wisdom that both the Bible and the Buddhist suttas teach Americans, Europeans and Asians. Something that was lost in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Values of St Augustine are to be celebrated with Vance, and of Mohandas Gandhi with Harris. Then why the discord? End wars (Biden ending the war in Afghanistan). End migrant incursions Harris pledge to sign the Lankford-Biden legislation into law that fixes asylum entry and Closes the Border with Mexico. Cost of living that hurts the needy and middle class the most. As Applebaum writes about Housing costs Trump has no plan, Harris is willing to put government resources into it. Republicans have their hands tied by a hands off government that is supposed to do nothing and hope everything will work out. That is without corporate housing company greed in a system that doesn/t work -they set the prices too high. As Kristof writes about in the NYT the Republicans will not support paid marital leave, will not support child care assistance, will not support cuts to high pharmaceutical costs, making healthcare unaffordable even to the middle class not to speak of the lower income working class. And will not support investment in the infrastructure that is crumbling around us even as the infrastructure is crumbling around us, like the bridge in Baltimore that went down in minutes. Trump used infrastructure issue in 2016 and rightly so, and talked about it being Infrastructure Week every week, yet did nothing for infrastructure, nothing serious until Biden in 2016-2020. This a continuing project for Harris. Part of this is to end the wars (Biden's efforts in Afghanistan ending it). And end the migrants incursions, Harris 's pledge to sign the Lankford-Biden immigration bill that fixes asylum entry and closes the US Border with Mexico. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Crypto currency Terra founder Do Kwon is arrested in Montenegro. US and South Korean authorites have lawsuits against the cryptocurrency founder saying financial crimes were committed. About $40 billion in value of assets was wiped out in this scheme. Terra founder claimed the support for the currency came from algorithms as there was no solid asset at a bank supporting the currency. To strain credibility further the currency was called Stablecoin. Kwon Do was a computer science degree graduate from Stanford. The use of tech algorithms or computerized programs to create currency that has always been done by central banks of each country- such as the Federal Reserve in the US -was possible because of the culture set by Silicon Valley in the San Francisco region of California that has prevailed in the last two decades. Without this culture and its spread across America and the world no sane person would even think of putting out currency, which is the sole responsibility of the government and central bank of each country. Too many people were hurt, lives disrupted or damaged by the financial crisis from faulty mortgages in 2009 for the Federal Reserve and the Biden administration to allow cryptocurrency or some other such scheme to operate and repeat these mistakes.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The pandemic and the lockdowns resulted in a sudden surge in demand in 2020 and 2021 for home delivery of goods by Amazon. Amazon expanded rapidly during this period. Now in 2022 Andy Jassy the new Amazon CEO is cutting back warehouse capacity and finding ways to reduce Amazon's size as buyers are cutting back now that the economy is getting back to some normalcy. Inventories are piling up for retailers Target and Walmart. During the pandemic Bezos set up hundreds of new warehouses and sorting centers, and employees doubled to 1.6 million from March 2020 to March of 2022. As instore buying came back and Amazon projections of long term demand turned to be too high Andy Jassy the new CEO is working on cutting back. Amazon says this extra capacity will mean $10 billion in extra costs in the first 6 months of 2022. Its stock lost about one third of its value under Andy Jassy's first year as CEO. Jassy and his team are working to sublease about 10 million square feet of excess warehouse space and renegotiate warehouse contracts. Dana Mattiolo looks at how Mr. Jassy tackled the new job of online retail with his obsession for detail, learning the new business from scratch. He was previously head of the cloud business at Amazon which generated three fourths of the profit of Amazon. Jassy says Amazon always chose the higher end of the numbers generated by its forecasting tool SCOT that showed how much warehouse and handling capacity was needed. SCOT tool generated high medium and low figures of what the demand would be and what resources were needed to tackle it. The policy of Bezos who ran the operations and delved into details during the pandemic was to not constrain sellers and buyers during the pandemic. Though not mentioned here this was a decision of Bezos that helped America tackle the pandemic in an effective way. And could be seen as a courageous move by Bezos of ignoring the risks and doing the right thing for America and the American people. It is now left to Jassy to figure out how to take corrective action but the basic policy of Bezos was done with the right intentions towards America during a period of serious danger of the pandemic when over a million lives have already been lost. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In commenting on Rishi Sunak, a former hedge fund manager's sudden rise from anonymity three years ago when Boris Johnson became prime minister to leadership of the Tory party and prime minister, The Hindu cautions that it is of limited symbolic value, this kind of connection between India and the UK. The Tories are a house divided against itself, with many factions. Truss was brought down by Gove and others on the backbench who were not included in the government. Other Conservatives on the backbenches today, and Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg, represent factions that are not represented in this government as was evident in questioning by Opposition leader Starmer in QA in the House of Commons. Other problems remain also evident in Starmer's questioning for Labour in parliament, including questioning about non domicile status in the family for tax purposes. Privileged Tories with connections to free markets such as Jacob Rees Mogg or Sunak without an awareness of the pain of ordinary working families, are not what a country with a cost of living crisis sees as leaders who can point to the way forward for Britain. As The Hindu points out he faces the same difficulty that Johnson with his style and personality was able to sidestep, that Truss naively tackled with quick unraveling of tax cuts for the upper incomes, and which Sunak with his experience with financial hedge funds may appear to have grasped but find escaping his grasp. This is the difficulty of matching traditional Tory policy of tax cuts and austerity, at a time when all major countries of Europe and the US are providing significant cost of living assistance to working families. Even small bits of austerity policy, or lack of conviction to help working families may now be seen by the Opposition, Labour, and even within some part of the Tory party and the vast majority of working families as oppressive.  Starmer is keen to remind working people of where Sunak stands as he did with the question in parliament Q&A about the comments made by Sunak at a small gathering that he had transferred money from poor districts to more affluent Tory districts. Would Sunak correct these erroneous funding formulas, Starmer asked. The Hindu also mentions Suella Braverman's appointment as Home Secretary only weeks after her resignation. It was poor judgement shown by Johnson in an appointment that cost him Tory support a few weeks before his resignation. Starmer brought this up from the beginning of parliament Q&A- asking whether a deal was made for her appointment to get far right wing Tory support from Braverman's faction in the party. For India and the Indian people there are so many genuine connections with Britain and the British people, some set when Mohandas Gandhi won the hearts of English working families during his visit for negotiations with the British that are are a better basis  and that will be remembered forever in the hearts and minds of the British people. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
There appears to be a split in the Iranian leadership about whether Iran should forge ahead with the development of nuclear weapons. National Intelligence Estimate findings, show that economic difficulties resulting from international sanctions may be causing some of the Iranian leadership to question the value of forging ahead with the nuclear weapons program. Iran cut subsidies sharply for fuel, electricity, and food in December 2010.

LyrArc Article Gist
Ilan Berman, vice president of the Foreign Policy Council in Washington D.C., cites former finance minister Alexei Kudrin about capital flight from Russia reaching as high as $160 billion in 2014. This is a result of Russian policies in Ukraine that are creating a high degree of uncertainty and investor fears about the Russian economy. The result Kudrin says would be a stagnating economy. This follows the emerging market crisis in the beginning of 2014, which hit Turkey, Argentina, and Brazil. Kudrin is respected for his efforts to strengthen Russia's finances in Putin's first term in office, and left the administration over disagreement with prime minister Medvedev on damage to finances from higher defense spending. This suggests Putin and Medvedev in their first terms as president conducted more prudent policies for the economy than they are doing in Putin's second term. A certain recklessness seems to have crept in as many respected advisors from that period have left over differences in policy, including how protests and the opposition's views should be handled. This includes Medvedev's early efforts after elections for dialogue with the opposition parties which were set aside by Putin. The danger with having a Bolivarist class of tycoons as in Venezuela and some developing countries, instead of wiser heads around him for Putin, is that he will lose the advice and counsel he so badly needs to conduct policies without letting emotions getting the better of a sound judgement. A large foreign exchange reserve is a buffer for Russia, but this needs to be used to diversify the economy away from dependence on oil and commodities by investing in technology industries to create jobs in other fields, and not wasted in higher defense spending and fighting investor sentiment for the value of the ruble. It also shows that there is an inherent value in having a "loyal opposition" and "shadow cabinet," and these institutions were not invented over centuries of practice in government without a reason, in that they actually help the governing administration pursue prudent policy without arbitrary actions. The irony is that the very fears of 1998 repeating itself with the "chaos" of western style democracy and politics and manipulation by oligarchs- a Putin complaint- is reversing the gains made by Russia since then, with another set of tycoons and vested interests in place. Russians, like the Germans can learn to make democracy work without a centuries long history of democratic traditions, elections and free media. Czarist traditions can be overcome just as the Prussian traditions were overcome, and Russians can come up with their own Wily Brandts and Gaucks, leaving behind the old history of suppressing contrary opinions. For this to happen Russians including Mr. Putin need to leave their own fears behind, and trust the Russian people for the right instincts and values and maturity of judgement, just as the Germans have done and succeeded. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
All the danger signs are flashing red says Prof. Simon Johnson of MIT's Sloan School of Management, as Citigroup stock loses 26% on November 20, 2008 and 50% of the stock's value in just 4 days. The fear is that Citigroup faces still bigger losses as home mortgages, credit card loans, commercial real estate debt all deteriorate further in a deep economic downturn, and that Citigroup will need large sums of additional capital from the government. There is similiar to the Detroit auto industry executives and public opinion a big gap in how Wall Street investors and Citigroup executives see the company's situation.

LyrArc Article Gist
R.E.O. is lingo for "Real Estate Owned," the term for homes taken in by banks that are from foreclosures. Reomac is the industry group that specializes in the sales of such homes. And "REO tsunami" refers to the flood of some 700,000 bank properties now on the market nationwide. Therre were just 100,000 in 2006. In February, nearly 45% of the home sales natinwide were called short sales in which homeowners under duress sell a property for less than their mortgage, according to the National Associaiton of Realtors. These sales have worsened a natiowide decline in home values, as REO homes typically sell at a 20% discount. Reomac just held its 2009 conference at Palm Desert. The extravagance and the excess at the conference is amazing considering that the whole country is facing this crisis and California is one of the hardest hit states. From the way people are trying to get these properties one could not imagine that the rest of the country is going through a crisis, and millions in developing countries might at this very moment be plunged below the poverty line!...

LyrArc Article Gist
Former finance minister, Rodrigo Rato, resigns as executive chairman of Spain's Bankia bank. Spain's Bankia bank is believed to be one of the banks mentioned by the IMF that will need government help to address 32 billion euros in bad loans. Bankia bank is the result of consolidation in 2010 of seven of Spain's Cajas savings banks in a government led restructuring. Bankia is expected to get 7-10 billion euros from the government in the form of convertible bonds. The government gave $4.5 billion to Bankia to absorb some of the losses in 2010. Bankia made an IPO offering in 2011 in 3.3 billion euro listing. Since then the shares have lost one third of the value. Experts are uncertain about the extent to which this will restore confidence.

LyrArc Article Gist
This New York Times editorial says the U.S. Obama administration and its Housing Secretary Donovan should stop pretending that its settlement is the best way to help homeowners under water. The editorial asks the serious question- how far would the $20 billion settlement the banks would provide under the deal help, when 14.6 million homeowners owe $753 billion more on their mortgages than the value of their homes? The Obama administration is pressuring New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, to accept the settlement with the largest U.S. banks for questionable foreclosure practices, including robo-signing. It asks Schneiderman to resist these pressures and not support the settlement. Schneiderman has resisted this pressure because he and other prosecutors would be restricted from pursuing their investigations into wrongdoings in housing mortgages. The proposal from the Times to the Obama administration is to make principal reductions for underwater homeowners who are currrent in their payments through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The proposal to help homeowners uner water on their mortgages was first proposed by Martin Feldstein during the mortgage financial crisis in 2008-2009 with repeated op-eds in leading newspapers including the Wall Street Journal. Paul Krugman called attention to the failure of the Obama administration on this issue in recent op-eds. Peter Coy of Business Week pointed to some form of loan forgiveness as an essential part of restoring the economic health of the U.S. and Europe in the August issue of Bloomberg Business Week. Higher unemployment has made the foreclosure crisis worse, and has created a strong headwind for the U.S. economy by erasing chances of an early recovery in American housing markets. The Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program has been a dismal failure in helping homeowners facing foreclosure and was a huge missed opportunity to take the correct action early....

LyrArc Article Gist
Bernanke's speech at the annual Fed Jackson Hole meeting put any future policy action off for the September meeting of the Fed's Open Market Committee, which will meet for 2 days to allow lengthy discussion of issues. He repeated his focus made in earlier statements that other actions are needed to reduce the headwinds facing the U.S., actions other than the Fed's monetary policy. He called for "good, proactive housing policy," which has been a major missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the American economy. Specifically, "families with mortgage debt bigger than the value of their homes facing unusual financial hardship which is also hurting the banks." Martin Feldstein and other experts have repeatedly called for action to help homeowners under water since the mortgage financial crisis hit in 2008. And the government's response has been tepid at best. Most evaluations of the Home Affordable Modification program and other programs to help prevent foreclosures consider them a serious failure of the Obama administration. Higher unemployment has only increased the urgency for government action in this area and good proposals were made by Feldstein and other experts. On the deficit and debt issues Bernanke would like to see debt to GDP ratios "at least stable, or preferably, declining over time." He also cautions that this be done bearing in mind "the fragility of the current economic recovery." He says his estimate for the U.S. economy's growth rate is 0.7% annual rate for the second half, and 'looks likely to improve." His prediction is for inflation to settle at around 2%. His main concern is that the there will be "an erosion of skills and loss of attachment to the labor force" for the long term unemployed....

LyrArc Article Gist
What is happening here appears to be that the whole American system of government as it operates today has some serious weaknesses, which if exposed in a critical situation- and with some life threatening situation for an industry group- can subvert the whole system and the economic life of the country. The serious weaknesses are the lobbying of Congress that is legal, and the financing of Congressmen and Senators election campaigns by industry groups which is legal. The life threatening situation for an industry group are the accounting rules and nuances that require that the banking and financial industry that holds these mortgage home loans, if they change one loan to lower payments in one geographic area, have to then show the lowered value of that loan in their books on all other loans of that type in that geographic area. Without this the banks and financial institutions were already or close to insolvent with losses of over $1 trillion. With that accounting change the industry losses would make large parts of the industry insolvent. This becomes incentive enough to fight loan modifications at all costs for the industry, and explains why Hope for Homeowners has generated only 25 loan modifications when it was advertised to generate 400,000. This creates a once in a lifetime or once in a hundred year chance of the whole system of democratic government working to destroy the economic life of the country. How? By providing a big enough reason for the banking and financial industry to fight loan modifications almost to the death, against even their better judgement when in late 2008 and January 2009 this would mean suicide for the economic life of the country, and the chance that they would both go down into the depths, the industry and the boat that is the American economy. This is what this story tells us, all key Congressmen and Senators were taken into their fold by the lobbying groups with large donations to their election funds, both Republican and Democrat, Shelby, Frank, Dodd, Durbin, and their aides. After Hope for Homeowners program failed, the new Hope Now program was again designed with the connivance of lawmakers in both parties by the banking industry representatives. It was designed so it would largely fail by not doing enough to keep homeowners in their homes. The industry faced with a life threatening situation did the wrong thing. Instead of saying lets get the government to help to change the accounting rule, and advocating that the government join the industry to share the losses and go out aggressively to restructure the loans in a three way loss sharing arrangement with homeowners, government and the industry, the industry instead decided to stick its head in the sand and let nobody do anything period. To do this it had to create the illusion that somehow the problem would fix itself with housing recovering on its own. In addition to the donations many Republicans like Preston, Secretary of HUD with oversight of FHA, and others in the Bush administration, may have had the mistaken notion that somehow the housing industry would recover without much help, that the economy was basically still healthy, that the crisis was not as bad as it appeared, that freemarket principles were still the best guide, and that toxic assets of banks and foreclosures were two entirely different things, with foreclosures for those who had borrowed recklessly not a bad thing....

LyrArc Article Gist
Friedrich Drumpf left Germany at the age of 16, coming to the U.S. in 1885. He came back to Germany to find a wife after running restaurants in California during the time of the Gold Rush. When he tried to return to hsi home town because of his wife was homesick he was expelled a s a draft dodger for missing military service. Kallstadt is a wine producing region. Drumpf was tenacious and keen on getting ahead, a trait that marked his son Fred Trump who built state financed housing in the FDR period in New York, and his on Donald Trump who went into luxury housing. Biographer Gwenda Blair says all members of the family were good at finding loopholes, saving money, and shared the family culture of knowing who the audience is that they are targeting. This is why says Bair that Trump is at ease in being a onetime Democrat, now Republican, sometime liberal and sometimes conservative, and can appeal to people in different ways that would be impossible for most politicians, even people on opposite sides for different reasons. Gwenda Blair is author of two books on the Trump family. "Trumps- Three Generations That Built an Empire," and "Donald Trump: Master Apprentice."     ...